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London, England — Pottermore, the global digital publisher of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World announced today, as part of their new publishing programme, that the screenplay of Warner Bros. Pictures’ feature film …

Like
many children of Asian immigrants, I grew up believing there are only two paths
you can take in life: pursue medicine, or pursue law. It never occurred to me
as a kid that I could follow anything other than the path my parents so
carefully laid out for me: college close to home, stable job, Asian husband, a
litter of babies. “Dream jobs” are for
white people, I was always told, not
for you.

Despite
knowing that, I had a deep, deep love for reading. At any given point in my
childhood, I’d be buried in a story, accompanied by the likes of Pooh, of Harry
Potter, of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. My parents would encourage my love of books
because they knew it would help me in my studies. But little did they know that
this early reinforcement would lead to my wanting to make a career out of it,
to rebel against the blueprint they’d made for my life since before I was born.

As a
teenager, I felt caught between two worlds. In one, I was a dutiful daughter,
who wanted to honor my Cambodian heritage and make my parents proud on their
terms. And in the other, I was an American, who wanted a career as a book
editor, wanted to pursue this very Western ideal of “doing what you love.” It
seemed impossible to reconcile my worlds, to find common ground among such
disparate identities. So when college application season rolled around, I had
some of the most difficult conversations with my parents I’ve ever had.
Immigrant family or not, it’s never easy being a teenager having to articulate
why you want to do something when your parents just don’t see the world the
same way you do. Especially when said thing involves a cross-country move,
gargantuan student-loan debt, and a college degree that practically reeks of
unemployment.

But
in spite of these difficult conversations, I was still privileged to have
parents who were open-minded enough to allow me down this unconventional path,
even if they didn’t believe in it themselves. (I swear, my mom still
occasionally mentions that it’s not too late for pharmacy school…) I was given
a privilege many of my peers were not—to be able to take a risk with my future.
There were no expectations for me to send money home, to do anything beyond
support myself. I am aware of this privilege I carry, and the guilt stemming
from that is something I think about all the time.

As
soon as I moved to New York for college, it was a whirlwind from there. I had a
wealth of opportunities I wouldn’t have had where I grew up in Southern
California. I did a slew of unpaid internships at literary agencies and
publishing houses, worked at a few bookstores, and curated connections that
eventually led to my first job in publishing, as an editorial assistant at
Scholastic.

I am
constantly thinking about why there are so few people from traditionally
marginalized backgrounds in the industry, and I always come up with the same
sense of discomfort. I worked hard to get that first job in publishing, certainly,
but a lot of the systemic barriers that keep the industry the way it is—being
predominantly New York-based, surviving on unpaid internships, low starting
salary, to name a few—I was able to overcome through sheer luck, some very
generous people, and again that word, privilege. Until we as an industry think
more critically about these barriers and come up with concrete solutions, we’ll
never change. Thankfully, the tides seem to be turning. Survey results are
being shared, think-pieces written, uncomfortable conversations happening, all
over the industry.

In
the meantime, I’m doing everything I can in my current role to elevate
marginalized voices, to bring into the world new perspectives that haven’t yet
been featured, so maybe teenagers today (and tomorrow and for the next
bajillion years) don’t have to struggle as much as I did to imagine a future
full of infinite possibilities.

Jennifer
Ung is an associate editor at Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Books. Her previous experience includes editing books for teens and
tweens at Scholastic and hand-selling books and moderating events at Books of
Wonder. When she’s not reading or talking about books, you can find her waxing
poetic about food, playing uselessly complicated board games, and thinking of
new ways to incorporate Mean Girls quotes into everyday conversation.
Follow her on Twitter @jenpanda.

In his second post, Yang discusses some of the different approaches to the creative process. Yang considers himself a “planner” or “outliner,” creating a preliminary outline for his projects while allowing …

DiCamillo traveled the country as National Ambassador (2014-15), spreading the message that “Stories Connect Us,” and that reading together helps forge community. She in turn discovered that kids everywhere are still …

Contributed by Christine Bronstein, Founder, Nothing But The Truth Publishing

Many topics are being explored around diversity in
children’s books, which I think is critical to our world. Publisher’s
Weekly reported that the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s
annual conference had “more panels than ever addressing issues of diversity in
both adult books and children’s books and inclusivity in terms of whose work is
being published and promoted.” As an author and a publisher—and a very white
one—I wonder if we don’t need a new framework to understand the importance of this
topic for our culture as a whole. Maybe we should view the lack of diverse
voices as a cultural problem that extends beyond the color of our skin; one
that may form our views of the world as literally more black and white than
they are.

Books, like no other craft, give us windows into the
imagination and world of the creators. Children’s books help children make
sense of the world around them and aid the development of language and
thinking. Books help children with social cognition, providing them with a
deeper understanding of how the social world works.

What happens to a culture where only the imaginations and
inner worlds of one race or one gender or one way of living our lives is laid
out for us to examine? It inherently creates
a sense of separateness for those both outside and inside of the dominant
culture being represented. I believe that pushing for diversity in children’s
books may be one very important key to opening the minds and hearts of our
culture as a whole.

I asked Maria Martin, long time Kindergarten teacher—and
author of our upcoming children’s book, which aims to help children communicate
inclusively about race and heritage—how the lack of diversity in children’s
books affects children. She told me:

“Children
need to see themselves in books in order to connect to the world of books.
When students of diverse backgrounds only see books by and about the
majority culture, they get the message that books are not for them. We also
give students the message that their life experiences are not important. The
message for white students is that cultural diversity is not something to
embrace and value. Books are such a critical component to education that when
students feel excluded from that component, it reverberates through their
entire educational experience in a negative way. As an educator of young
children, my biggest goal is to instill a lifelong love of learning. Because
books are a crucial tool for learning, students have to learn to love books. Students
learn about the world through books, so we have a responsibility to make sure
that the world we represent through books is accurate.

“Recently,
I read the book A Letter to Amy, by
Ezra Jack Keats, to my daughter. She continued to ask me to read the book for
several nights in a row. When I commented that she really must like this book,
she said ‘I like this book because Amy looks like me.’ As a brown-skinned child
with long, thick braids, she doesn’t always get to see herself in books. The
benefits of diverse books for children of all cultures and backgrounds are
endless.

So, when the few books by and about people of color are
relegated to a niche shelf on the far side of a bookstore, or worse, not
published, we further ingrain this idea of separateness into young minds. By
doing this we are saying that someone’s world and imagination aren’t as
interesting or universal because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. What
if we had all grown up with equal representation of races in children’s books,
allowing us to choose characters we admire and connect with based on attributes
other than race?

If the goal is actually inclusion—as many in the publishing
world are claiming—the path should not only be to publish, review and promote diverse
voices, but also to open our minds to our sameness, our oneness, and ingrain in
ourselves and our children that no person can be neatly slotted into one
section or another. Make sure the children around you are exposed to as many
diverse books as possible so they have a full understanding of what it means to
live in our world.

Here are some of Maria Martin’s favorite inclusive books for
kids:

Shortcut, Donald Crews

Come on Rain Karen Hesse

Last Stop on Market Street, Matt de la Peña

Grandfather’s Journey, Allen Say

I Have a Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whistle for Willie, Ezra Jack Keats

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, John Steptoe

Christine Bronstein is the founder of
Nothing But The Truth Publishing, an independent publishing house specializing
in works by diverse female authors. She is also the author of the
popular Stewie BOOM! children’s book series. In 2009,
she started A Band of Women, a social network and information website for
women. Chris’s writing has been published on Forbes.com, the
San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and on Maria Shriver’s website.
She has been featured in Elle, 7x7 Magazine and The
San Francisco Chronicle.

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The newsletter is a valuable resource for librarians, teachers, booksellers, parents and caregivers, publishing professionals, and children’s literature lovers. Find thought-provoking articles, diverse new releases, and more in this month’s issue and sign …

01Portland, ME — The SYNC Audiobooks for Teens program, sponsored by AudioFile Magazine and powered by OverDrive, kicks off its seventh year with an exciting lineup that includes bestselling and award-winning authors …

Facing racial discrimination in her predominantly white hometown, Carter longed for stories that reflected her identity and experience. She went on to work at Sesame Street magazine, Disney-Hyperion and Scholastic, where …

Now through May 2, literary items ranging from novel critiques to author visits are up for auction. Proceeds will support Lifting Hands International. The range of items (and experiences), include novel critiques …

Public Law 99-457 passed in
1986, amending the Education of the Handicapped Act and requiring states to provide
appropriate and free public education to children with disabilities ages 3
through 5. Shortly after the implementation of this law began in 1991, I was
fortunate enough to work with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in
Washington, D.C. As one of the few white women on staff, I learned much about
diversity and disability. However, the lessons I learned often left me dismayed
about how society represented each and every child. I learned one such lesson when
I wanted to find dolls that the children and I could wash together in the water
table. I liked this activity because I could talk to children about the
different aspects of the dolls, like skin color. I went in search of black
dolls for the water table because the children in my class were black and
Hispanic. I rarely had a white student in my class. I went to store after store
after store looking for dolls. There were white babies everywhere but no black
or Hispanic babies. I finally found a catalog I could order them from but could
not get over that fact that dolls of other races were not available in stores. These
were the same stores my students’ families shopped in every week.

The good news is that over the
past 25 years the practice of having a limited diversity of dolls has changed.
Now, even Barbie comes in all shapes and sizes! While I do consider this a
victory for young girls everywhere, my daughter, who is from India and has a
disability, still has a difficult time finding herself represented in
children’s literature. Certainly, there are lots of books about girls growing up
in today’s society. In fact, many have whole series of books written about
them. Most of the time, though, they are white girls growing up in a world with
limited colors. My friend Jo and I wanted to change the way my daughter and
others like her are able to view themselves in our ever-changing society. We
wanted to show children from all walks of life with many different types of
disabilities and backgrounds doing the things they love most. This love
translated into building on their interests and skills so they can become more
self-directed and self-determined over the course of their young lives. We know
being self-determined starts to happen way before a teenager turns 18. We
encourage you to peel back the pages of a good book and see how it represents
you or a child you care about it in a positive way. This same book should
embrace the child’s diversity in the context of their family.

Vera Lynne
Stroup-Rentier worked in the fields of Early Childhood and Special Education as
a teacher for 25 years. She has a PhD in Special Education from the University
of Kansas and is currently working at the Kansas State Department of Education.
She has
co-authored seven children’s books with Jo Meserve Mach for Finding My Way
Books. All Finding My Way books are written to honor children with special
needs or disabilities by sharing their stories. Their most recent title, ‘OE
Wants It To Be Friday,’ features a young girl adopted from Russia who has
Cerebral Palsy and uses a communication device. Visit findingmywaybooks.com for more
information.